LIN transceiver

Local Interconnect Network (LIN) is a broadcast serial network comprising one master and many (up to 16) slaves. The LIN bus is typically used in the automotive industry as smaller and less expensive sub-network of a CAN bus to integrate intelligent sensor devices or actuators.

STK600 features the ATA6661 LIN transceiver. a three-pin header serves to connect to the bus. With the ATA6661 an AVR on the STK600 can implement a LIN master or a LIN slave.

The 'M LIN' jumper provides the master node pull-up, required if the application running on STK600 is the LIN bus master.

The 3-pin LIN connector must provide V-battery ('BAT') 12V>BAT>5V, and GND. 'BAT' must be supplied from an external source. For further reference, see the ATA6661 datasheet.

The LIN transceiver is connected to the MCU trough the six-pin 'LIN' header near the switches on STK600. The target MCU will usually implement the LIN protocol in software trough a USART interface. The 'NSLP' pin must be actively driven high to keep the ATA6661 from sleep mode.

Note: Due to ATA6661 design, it is mandatory to enable the internal pull-up on PD2 (RxLIN) when LIN is used (c.f. AT90CAN128 Datasheet, section “I/O Ports”).